


calcification

by farnear



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: (Implied) Drunk sex, F/F, Light Substance Abuse, Multi, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 08:25:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13142790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farnear/pseuds/farnear
Summary: A banquet, Marcia said. Yes, it’s like a punch party but at a hotel, and – Marcia knew what a banquet was. She said so. Lennie shut up and didn't mention it again.





	calcification

**Author's Note:**

> ...we all know why we're here.
> 
> My first reason to write a rule 63! au was my immense satisfaction with the nicknames I made up for Wardo, here Elena Saverin. I don't assume the timeline would be the same for Marcia and Elena, but if it was, this fic would be set between the Bill Gates talk, and the drinks with Alice and Christy. I decided not to replace Christy - or Erika - with men who I don't think would have the same effect if they had their personalities, so I went with two generic OCs instead. All other characters are who they were in canon.
> 
> Beta'd by Asey who heroically endured my two weeks-long period of renewed obsession with the movie & as always gave me lots to think about. As I worked on this, I realized TSN may be the most gendered, not to say sexist, text I engaged with. To figure out how it would work, were Mark and Wardo anything but cis men, seems to me like an inherently doomed endeavour. I tried & I failed, but I had fun trying - so here's hoping someone else will have fun reading it, too.

The Porcellian was housed at 1320-24 Massachusetts Ave, opposite to the Harvard Square and the freshman dorm in Wigglesworth Hall. You could see it from your room, if you had a room on the right side. It’s funny – how close it was, the shiny black door, the portals, the attic mansard. As if you could just cross the street and – but you couldn’t, if you were a non-member. And you couldn’t be a member, if you were female. But, if you were female, you could marry a member. Then, he would take you in. You’d see the net of parlors and reception rooms, the billiard room and on the last floor, the banquet hall, where no one ever had a banquet. But it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter the house is empty and dusty – what matters is whether you can go inside, or not. They say there is a mirror in a room looking out on the street, and it’s poised in a special way so if you look into it, you see the street, and the street doesn’t see you. This is what matters. This is why you go there. To see, and not be seen. But if you’re female, and dressed in a wedding gown, like – of course, you’re seen.

Marcia had a room in Wiggles. She stared out of her window, and sometimes she imagined she saw it: a bride on the other side of the glass pane. Or a ghost. Or a puffy scone of a meringue. At the sight of Lennie, the memory comes back crashing. It’s her new coat. White. Lennie said: cream. She said: angora. She said: you won’t _believe_ what just happened. Marcia blinks, and returns to the code.

‘Lando!’

‘Lookin’ _good_ , Lands.’

Billy whistles.

‘Gentlemen,’ Lennie smiles and moves, as if to curtsy.

Dustin and Chris don’t close their laptops, but they might as well have. They have thousand dollars’ – thousand users’ – worth on their screens, but a hot girl comes in – their attention zaps. It’s tribal. They stare as Lennie shakes the coat off her arms and sits on the edge of their run-down sofa. She pretends she doesn’t mind the stains.

‘Want a beer?’ Billy gets up.

‘I’d be much obliged.’

It’s like an inside joke, between her and the guys. They called her Lennie first, when Marcia started it, then they called her Lando, as if she were a hockey player with a functional knowledge of _Star Wars_. She calls them: gentlemen. She says: much obliged. She gets a bottle of Beck’s and puts her mouth in a strange shape on the neck – as if she won’t reapply her lipstick before she lets anyone else see her.

You won’t _believe_ what happened, she said. It was just after the Bill Gates talk. Marcia left, but Lennie had to make a trip to the bathroom. It was cold outside, but there was a problem with the chat Marcia had to figure out – there was Bill Gates – there was the letter from the Winklevii – she didn’t hear when the guy came up so she yelped when he tapped her arm. He laughed and said they were in the same OS lab, and good job with thefacebook, and if she wanted any help. They could have a beer. Oh, but we have plans, Lennie said, suddenly there, her arm snuck under Marcia’s. _So_ sorry. She let a giggle out before they crossed the quad, and leaned against Marcia as if she couldn’t walk, like school girls do, bodies occupied with laughter. But Marcia didn’t mind, Lennie’s weight on her arm, and the tickle of Lennie’s hair on her cheek. Then, Lennie said, you won’t _believe_ it. This guy caught me in the corridor, really cute – a _swimmer_ , she made eyes at Marcia – and he asked me out. To a _banquet_. _Phoenix_ is having it, at the Hyatt.

Phoenix is a waste of space, if there is the Porcellian on the campus. But Phoenix is a final club. A real final club, not like the Bee, or the – whatever – Hasty Pudding. A banquet, Marcia said. Yes, it’s like a punch party but at a hotel, and – Marcia knew what a banquet was. She said so. Lennie shut up and didn’t mention it again. Mostly, Marcia doesn’t care. Like she doesn’t care for the Bee Club, and the Harvard Investors, and Lennie’s new angora coats, new suits, new and shiny watches. Lennie won’t grow a dick – or a family tree with roots on Mayflower – on a party. Even if the party is at the Hyatt.

‘We’ll hit full ten pretty soon,’ Dustin says. He turned back to the screen for a moment, and read the numbers to Marcia. Chris and Billy slumped on the armrests, Lennie caught in between, look as lost as she does, before they remember what the number means. It’s tribal, Marcia thinks. But tribal is good. Thefacebook is a tribe of just such guys who want to meet hot girls, and of girls who want to be hot. A tribe of ten _thousand_.

‘Oh?’ Lennie looks very dumb like this, pink mouth in a round o, the bottle suspended in the air. Marcia can’t stand it.

‘Members.’

‘Wow.’ Lennie looks at her. She has been looking at her for the whole time, but she was pretending not to. Now she doesn’t pretend. She fixes her eyes on Marcia, and grins. It’s kind of fun. To know that she, Marcia, can do it. Lennie gets up from the sofa, and goes up to where Marcia has her set-up. The desk is technically Billy’s but Marcia bought her rights to it for twenty bucks, once, when Billy was very high. Best deal she ever made, and she had no CFO to help her with it.

‘Wow, Marcy,’ Lennie says again, quiet, and leans over to see the number on the screen. The perfume goes into Marcia’s face, and chokes her, a little.

‘Not yet,’ she says. Lennie turns from the screen.

‘I’m sorry I won’t be there for –’

‘Yeah.’

Marcia starts a new line of the code, and hopes Lennie will get the hint. It’d be alright, if Lennie only just _shut the fuck up_.

‘But I – I couldn’t _not_ go.’

‘No.’

‘Next time, I’ll make sure to take you –'

Marcia snorts. ‘I don’t need cannon fodder at the Phoenix party in my CV, thanks.’

‘No.’ Lennie moves away. ‘No, you’re right. You don’t need –’

 

 

‘—a fourth player!’

Elena doesn’t understand the words. All her cognitive faculties are occupied with the pattern of small white birds, embroidered on a black tie, the tip of which shows over the dark blazer, tight on his chest. The birds are white, but phoenixes aren’t white. Phoenixes are red. Phoenixes aren’t real. Yet they are red. She rests against the column, and marvels at their solidities: her and the column’s. She doesn’t spill! She doesn’t fall to the drops! Her body feels more like a liquid – syrupy and hot – but she doesn’t spill, her body a solid mass, sensitive to the deliciously smooth wood behind it. She clutches her solo cup. There was wine at the banquet, and port after the banquet, and more at the after-party. There is a bar, where beautiful women in beautiful suits give you glasses with such grace, as if they were rare tulips. All of it – the women, the rich panels, the chandeliers, the decadent curve of the staircase – the small, white birds on his tie – melts Elena inside out. If Darron touched her –

‘We burnt some sugar,’ he speaks of a spring break in Prague, ‘to drink it the real way -’

‘We need a –'

‘And Blythe was wasted, so he just stares and stares at the fire, right, he says it’s so blue it must be cold, and sticks his tongue out –‘

She wore a blue dress. Lennie didn’t know her name, but she stared. Too tight on her breasts and belly: scrambled eggs. As if a shell broke under the bleached cotton and the tacky plastic buttons. It was April, and the air in the basement was dense, and old. It smelt as if nobody opened windows in winter, and it were Alpha Epsilon Phi brothers who pushed them open, only hours before the party. The girl stood in the corner and watched the others play. She didn’t blink. She sipped on the spiked Capri Sun. Then, she licked her lips. Then, she rubbed her blotchy cheeks. Elena doesn’t remember the excuses she made to whoever she was with. She doesn’t remember how they managed the hellos, and the introductions. All she knows is, they left the party together, and the same night Elena admitted for the first time that she had an idea, a pretty good idea, for an investment in oil futures. It had to do with weather. Heat. Hurricanes. It was very important that she told Marcy – it was very important, how Marcy’s eyes lit up – how she said – she said she doesn’t need  –

‘Excuse me, I need to –’

Elena’s legs fail. Darron’s hand is on her elbow.

‘Want to rest for a while? There’s a room –‘

‘No, I – my date is over there, sorry.’

She slips into the crowd, the boys in blazers and khakis, the girls – Marcy said, they were just –

‘Elena!’

It’s Skip. He’s at the table with a man and a girl. The man wears the Phoenix tie. The girl’s bra lies on the table, between tumblers and cards.

‘There you are,’ Skip says. ‘We need a fourth player.’

Elena leans in to be kissed, and falls on the empty chair. ‘My pleasure.’

The girl without her bra passes her some cards. Elena isn’t sure how many. She loses the count after two.

‘Christy –‘ the girl blows them a kiss – ‘Chase. Chase, Elena.’ Chase looks at her, and smiles. ‘Elena Saverin.’

‘Oh, the hedge fund girl?’

‘Nice to meet you.’ Elena gives out her hand, but Chase is shuffling the cards. Elena realizes she doesn’t know what the game is. ‘I’m also CFO for thefacebook, and Secretary of the Harvard –‘

‘Honey,’ Skip laughs into her ear. ‘ _Relax_. This ain’t an interview.’

‘Right.’ Elena says, too loud. She picks a tumbler from the table, just to busy the hand Chase didn't shake. ‘Sorry. What’s the game?’

‘You’ll see’.

The game starts like poker. It isn’t poker. The cards flash. Christy loses a stocking. Elena lays down a pearl earring, a milky round drop. Skip and Chase laugh, and tell her to save it – she isn’t sure if she does.

‘I feel weird,’ a voice says.

‘I have something.’ She leans over the table, and there is Christy’s mouth, open, and a pearl on her tongue. No, a phoenix’s egg. No, a pill. She glances – ‘Come on,’ Skip says – Chase says – someone says so – she leans closer –

 

 

 – and it breaks. She didn’t know an egg could break like this. She never cooks at home, and she almost never cooks here. It was stuck in the box, but just a little, and she was hungry – and this was all the food she had, in the common kitchen on the second floor of the Kirkland House, at two am – and it popped. She pulled it, and the egg shell came apart in her fingers. For the second she doesn’t realize, her fingers still push. They stick in the cold white. The bloodless yolk slips under her thumb. Then, it registers. She moves the fingers out and puts the box on the top of an overfilled dustbin. She wipes her hand in her sweatpants, but it doesn’t help. The stains shine in the colorless lightbulb light. She turns on the tap.

This was the last egg. This was all the food she had. She skipped the hall dinner, because she always goes with Lennie, and Lennie skipped the dinner – and lunch – because of the _banquet_. She doesn’t have food here, because she ate her last Cup-O’-Noodles two nights ago and Billy ate her Red Vines, because you should go on a diet, Zuck, because he knew she wouldn’t hack his laptop like she did it the last time he said it, because she was busy with thefacebook. She hasn’t gone to get groceries, because she doesn’t have time, and she never gets groceries anyway, because Lennie used to. Lennie hasn’t, in a while. Marcia turns the tap off. The  banquet. The Bee Club. The Harvard Investors Association. Marcia doesn’t care.

Back in the spring term, Lennie ordered a slow-cooker and lugged it herself to the second floor, and installed it in Marcia’s kitchen. She had all these recipes from her freshman year roommate. With quinoa, and kale, and leek. The stuff she made of it was pretty awful, but you didn’t need to go to the hall to get it, and Lennie said she liked to watch Marcia eat, which was creepy – but, whatever. They hung out because they didn’t mind their creepy things.

Marcia wonders how it would go down with the Bee’s president. Then, she doesn’t.

She is too hungry to code. _r u up_. She sends it to Chris. She waits for forty seconds. Then she goes to her room for her wallet. It’s cold outside, so she puts her hands in the pockets of her hoodie. Her fingers move, because it makes it easier to think. It’s as if her brain is wired to her hands. She needs a keyboard to think. She needs a screen. She tests how much can she close her eyes, and still see. The street is empty. It would be really nice, if you couldn’t hear the noise of all parties Harvard students throw on a Friday night. But she gets to an open grocery shop before it seriously pisses her off.

The cashier stares at her and looks as if he wanted to ask her a question, but relaxes a little at the sight of Phillip Exeter lettered across her chest. It’s funny how these things work.

She sees a row of Mac-N-Cheese boxes, when she slips and bumps into a cart. It’s a mostly empty cart. There’s just a box of condoms. Really – Marcia didn’t know people put these in _carts_. For future reference: people pull shit like this. She looks up.

The girl stares as Marcia as if she saw a ghost. She braces herself against the handle and pushes next to Marcia, lips in a thin line and eyes on the exist. It’s only when the bell on the entrance door chimes, that Marcia remembers the name. Erica Albright. No, she isn’t sure. (Condoms?). But, if it was – it could have been.

She saw her just once. Dustin was getting her a beer, for help with a problem set. Or because he wanted to get laid, and figured she would be up for it, all broken up. She noticed them the moment she sat down, and hid behind the menu, and then behind her pint – pints – for the rest of the evening. Then, Fred got up and went to the bathroom. She knew it would take him a while. It always has. Marcia tumbled down from her stool and made the beeline for the table. Erica Albright, she asked, and her voice sounded weird, like she was much more drunk than – but she knew her name from the e-mails, and Erica said yes, so – she doesn’t really remember what she said. She doesn’t remember it. She remembers, someone said fucking you is like staging porn with chess figures – but it was Fred, back on the phone. No, she had to say something – Erica’s face went very still, and very white, and her eyes glassed, and she just sat there, without a word, as if her face would fall to pieces, if she said it. Whatever. It was enough to say ‘Harvard’ to make a B.U. girl cry. Fred could be back anytime so Marcia didn’t go back for her pint and just went for the exit. Out on the street, she didn’t move. For a moment, she was surprised when Dustin caught up with her. He bumped her elbow and said, you’re a stone cold bitch, Zuck. She started it, she said. You _literally_ went over her table and chewed her face off – she was Fred’s new – whatever. He used to be all over Marcia, it was kind of gross. He’d bitch, if she didn’t give him the time of the day. _Then_ he gets an internship at a _bookstore_ and goes M.I.A.? I mean, she said – did she say all this? – I mean, it’s weird. So what if she read some of his e-mails? Turned out, she _had_ a reason. He and the B.U. girl were totally  – wait, Dustin said. You hacked your boyfriend’s account? Anyway. He didn’t get her more pints when she helped with problem sets, after that. But then she invented the goddamn facebook, so who cares.

She doesn’t get any food. She slips her phone out – it doesn’t matter it’s 2:47 am – and types a message to Fred: _do you_ –

 

 

— _need to talk ASAP._ Elena rubs her eyes. _sent: 5:11 am_. She leans against the tiles, and winces. She dials Marcy’s number and checks the mirror. It shows. It could’ve been worse. She doesn’t know when she fell asleep, but she woke up half an hour ago, in a fours posts bed in an otherwise empty bedroom on top floor of 72 Mt. Auburn. She opened her eyes, and the first thing she saw, were Christy’s flushed cheeks, a drop of spit in the corner of her half-opened mouth, and a row of small, straight teeth. She sighed and scrunched her nose, still asleep. Elena felt as if someone – someone – carefully, lovingly, picked her apart, the skeleton and the network of slippery blood vessels – and as if, re-made overnight, she now carried her insides slightly shifted – a millimeter, a micrometer to the left, with a ghost of touch just under her skin. Then, she saw Skip’s hand thrown over Christy’s waist. She got up. She dressed. It was cold, in her dress, and her coat was back in the coats’ room, three floors below – she hesitated over Skip’s blazer. She went to the bathroom just in her dress. The tiles were cold, when she leaned against them. The text still reads, _we need to talk ASAP_. She licks the rest of toothpaste off her mouth, and swallows it. She calls.

‘Hi –’

‘Finally. So, an expansion. Yale and Columbia – we need to make news – Chris will take care of that, but –‘

‘Marcy.’ The name echoes strangely in the bathroom. Marcy goes on at the speed of a missile: interns, shares, servers. ‘Marcy – give me a moment, please.’

Elena turns to the window. The world is invisible behind the thick, old glass, but her head feels better against it.

‘I am – I just woke up – I’m just not ready, right now.’

‘OK.’

‘Listen, I will get some coffee and go up to yours, and we’ll – we’ll discuss it.’

Marcy must have given a short nod, and forget Elena doesn’t see it, because she doesn’t reply. Then, she says:

‘It’s just you called me, so I thought you were.’

‘You told me to call you as soon as possible.’ It sounds like a whine, and Elena hates it. She focuses on the cold window pane, and says – slow and calm, ‘I didn’t know why’.

‘Why else?’

‘I don’t know, Marcy. I was worried.’

‘You didn’t need to be.’

‘You’re alright?’

‘ _Yes_.’

‘OK. OK – coffee, and see you soon’.

Marcy hangs up and Elena breaths out. There’s a steam on the glass, from her breath, and her forehead, and her shoulder blades. She doesn’t recognize these shapes, pale and round. She puts her makeup case on the edge of an old sink, and puts on the face she knows.

‘The bathroom is free, if you –‘ she stops. Christy laughs a little, and gets up from Skip, who under her, looks like a limp fish.

‘Sup.’

Elena smooths the white sheets, and sits down.

‘C’mere.’ Her body stiffens. ‘Relax, I’m not gonna ruin your face.’ His mouth is on her neck, now. ‘Your perfume is nice, what is it?’

‘Chanel no. 46.’

‘Classy. Your lucky number?’

He doesn’t move, even when Christy comes back. She put her hair in a ponytail. It looks good on her, the ponytail, and the blazer.

‘I have a –‘ Elena coughs. ‘I need to go.’

‘Too bad.’ Is he licking her? Why is he – ‘I’ll get you ladies a taxi.’

‘Cool,’ Christy says. ‘I’m at Quincy’.

Skip calls a taxi, and walks them to the door, past the columns and portals, the dark panels, and chandeliers. They look strange in the daylight, blank. Downstairs, men in blazers and boxers walk slowly around the rooms, chewing on vast sandwiches and protein bars. Between them, much smaller and quieter, move women in identical washed-out blue uniforms. Acrid smell of a cleaning liquid mixes with the coffee’s aroma.

The drive is quiet. Christy dozes off, and Elena turns a hairpin in her fingers. It isn’t hers. She found it in her heel. She picked it up, because it was small, and pretty – but the weight of it, the shape of it in her hands, it pushed her out of the hazy dream fog – she was suddenly awake, and could remember very easily the tumble of Christy’s hair – Lennie took the hairpins out– one by one – and as she did so – with a certain reverence – as she was slipping the hairpins out, and losing them on the floor – they kissed, and kissed, and –

The taxi stops. Christy is half-asleep. Elena stops herself from thinking – _come on_ , for _once_ – and nudges her, just a little.

‘Wha-?’

‘I’m like, _starving_. Want to get brunch?’

Christy yawns. ‘I’m broke.’ Her voice is raspy from the sleep.

‘I,’ Elena swallows, ‘I can pay.’

‘Yeah?’ Elena nods. She wishes she didn’t nod quite so fast. But: ‘OK,’ Christy says.

They get to Henrietta’s before the rush hour, and find a table at the end of a long booth, where it curves into an L. Elena orders them a pot of coffee and a cup of sweet dense cream, and a berry granola for Christy. She usually takes it herself, but today – today she came to the brunch in an evening dress, today she has a hairpin in the pocket of her new angora coat, today she has shifted – she orders pancakes. Dark chocolate chip, with rum carmelized bananas, and whipped cream. Christy doesn’t bat an eye. Christy doesn’t as much as look as her, but checks her phone.

Maybe she’s waiting for a message. The food arrives. Christy takes a mouthful of granola. Hard seeds crack in her mouth. Elena cuts a tiny piece of a pancake, and curls her mouth around it.

‘So… What’s your major?’

‘Psych.’

‘Psych. Cool.’ Elena pours herself some coffee, and just a little cream. ‘My friend, Marcia, almost went through with Psych.’ She remembers the conversation in vivid details. It was almost summer. Marcy wore a top from her high school P.E. kit, and it glued to her arms. She said, there are too many girls in Psych. I can’t take this shit, Lennie. She also didn’t wear a bra. ‘She said she could take a course she _didn’t_ know better than her professors.’

‘Mm.’ Christy takes a spoon of the cream and eats it, just like that. ‘Wait.’ She holds the spoon in the air. ‘Marica – like, Marcia _Zuckerberg_?’ Elena doesn’t say anything. She has long known, how it feels – how Marcia makes people feel, once they recognize her for who she is –  but she still doesn’t have words for it. ‘Holy _shit_. You’re friends with thefacebook’s founder?’

‘I mentioned – yes, I am. I mean, both of us – I mean, yes.’

‘Wow,’ Christy puts the spoon down. ‘Wow.’

This, Elena realizes, is it. This is as good as it gets. Then Christy recovers, and says:

‘Skip texted you yet?’

‘Wh – Skip –‘ Elena has to remind herself who, exactly, it was. ‘I haven’t checked.’ She does. ‘Um, no.’

‘Mm’.

They continue in silence. Elena chews on her pancake, and swallows down coffee with the cream. The sun behind the windows moves, and whitens. It is still strange to her, after the hazy light of Miami and Sao Paulo. New England sunlight is sharper, and perfectly geometrical. She doesn’t say so to Christy – she tries to discuss thefacebook, the Bee, the Harvard Investors Association. They talk, briefly, of Skip’s victory in the last regional swimming competition. Elena deliberates whether or not ask Christy for her opinion on Skip’s shaved legs, when Christy says:

‘Listen, this is really nice of you, but I need to get back.’ Elena nods, dumb. ‘Could you call me a taxi? I'd pay you back in like, a week tops.’

‘Oh. No, I’m – I’m done, too.’ She cuts the last piece of pancake and pushes it down. ‘We should share.’

‘OK.’

‘Do you want me to call it – right now?’

Christy doesn’t roll her eyes, Elena doesn’t think. ‘I guess.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, sure. It’s just –‘ she clutches Christy’s pin in her pocket, ‘I meant to ask. What – what happened the other night with –‘

‘Oh!’ Christy gasps, and laughs, eyes wide. ‘ _Oh_. Is this – you so don’t need to worry.’ She glances to the people at the tables around. ‘It’s all cool.’

‘But, um. Did we –’ Elena doesn’t know what to say. She takes a piece of a caramelized banana she missed before. It doesn’t taste like rum. She doesn’t know what it tastes like. ‘Did you and I –?’

Christy shifts in her seat. ‘It was just – you know, you were _really_ drunk, and just – kind of _there_ , it was creepy you just – staring – or whatever – and Skip was, um,’ she lowers her voice to a whisper, ‘busy on the other side, so – so I took care of you.’

‘Oh.’ The New England sun falls on the table, and cuts into the empty coffee pot. It shines. Elena stares at it, and realizes the shift inside her is irrevocable. If she were to put herself back, she would be unmade. This, now, is the only way to be: having been kissed by Christy. ‘Thank you.’

Christy doesn’t answer. It doesn’t matter, and then, it does. The pancake flops in Elena’s stomach.

‘…it’s not,’ Christy starts and breaks off. ‘It wasn’t, you know.’

‘No, no, of course not.’

‘Yeah,’ she gives a little nod, and smiles at Elena. ‘Bet you Skip would go _crazy_ if we –’

 

 

Marcia pauses. The cursor blips at the end of the line. She closes the section, and checks the results. The results are shit. 

It’s not a good day. (A day?).

She needs a coffee, or an energy drink, and fuck, she _will_ throw Billy’s laptop out of the goddamn window if he as much as _touches_ her food again.

She checks the traffic. They have gone past the ten last night. There’s more. Some users on thefacebook _right now_ , which really gives Marcia a kick, like a shot of hard liquor – or an orgasm, if Fred knew how – or a high. She knows what these people do. It’s as if she were in these rooms, all these different rooms, at the same time.

If she put some work to it, she could have all and any information ten thousand one hundred eighteen persons put on thefacebook, their pictures, their statuses, their chatlogs. They’re protected, but she constructed the protections. She could slip past. In and out. Nobody would know. Nobody would see. It feels really good, to know she could. Even her fingertips, they tingle.

But, she doesn’t. She lets them be, the numbers, the flickers behind her screen. The users. A tribe. Not people – better than people. Numbers balanced in swift equations. Not as dumb as people, so you can tell what they will do. People just –

There’s a knock on the door. Marcia doesn’t see her, but she knows it’s Lennie, because only Lennie knocks. She doesn’t wait for an answer, because she knows Marcia won’t answer. She comes in.

‘Hi,’ she says.

She looks like shit. No, she really does. Her hair is bushy. Her face looks sweaty. And she has a track suit on. It’s probably a ridiculously expensive track suit made from like, cashmere, but _still_. Marcia can’t remember the last time she saw Lennie in a track suit. Lennie changes even when she goes to the gym, and she puts on a jacket and a skirt, and a _ton_ of makeup to go to 7/11 – but Marcia doesn’t care.

Then, she remembers something. ‘What time is it?’

‘Um. 4:32’.

‘You said you would be here in an hour. I remember you said this. I don’t know _when_. Was it an hour ago?’

Lennie does this thing where she tries to look shorter. It pisses Marcia off, because it feels like Lennie is slouching to get on Marcia’s level – but now Marcia is in her seat, and Lennie is just pretending she isn’t crazy tall.

‘No, I’m sorry, I –‘

‘Do you want a seat?’

‘I.’ Lennie looks around, as if she hasn’t been here for most of the past semester. It’s kind of dumb of her to do it. Like, Marcia didn’t get new furniture over the break. You either sit at the desk, on the floor, or on the bed. ‘Thanks,’ Lennie says and drops on the bed.

‘OK, so,’ Marcia turns the chair. ‘We need to get Columbia and Yale, and we need it to be _big_. We need news stories, more servers, more people – Dustin and Chris will be on board, but I haven’t talked to them yet, because you – Lennie? Are you,’ she slows down and looks at her. ‘ready to discuss this?’

‘I – I’m sorry, I had a _really_ long night, and I –‘

It has never happened, with them. Many people forced Marcia to talk slower, to make eye contact, to use her hands like people Harvard invites to talk do – as if they were too dumb to understand it without hands and eyes – but Elena didn’t. Elena was _smart_ , and quick, and she always followed, but –

‘The banquet.’

‘Yes, and I –‘

‘Is this why you’re late?’

‘No. I mean –‘ Lennie’s hand twists Marcia’s bed sheets. ‘I was just, so _empty_ I had to get some food in, and –‘

‘Coffee.’

‘Yes, and coffee –‘

‘No – you said you’d get coffee.’ Marcia looks at her again. ‘You don’t have it.’

Why doesn’t Lennie have it? She always does what she says she would. She always gets Marcia stuff. They’re friends, because Lennie likes it, and Marcia doesn’t mind.

‘I don’t have it,’ Lennie says. She sounds like a record of herself. ‘I’m – I’m really sorry. But I just felt sick, so I couldn’t – I couldn’t go back there, and – and –‘ she blinks, and blinks, and blinks. She has _never_ done that. Marcia told her she hates it when people do it. Marcia _told_ her.

‘It’s just coffee,’ she says. ‘I don’t care.’

‘It’s not –‘

‘ _I don’t care_. Just pull yourself together, OK?’

Lennie looks up. Her cheeks are all pink, and her eyes are glassy.

‘Marcy –’

‘What.’ Lennie blinks, and shakes her head. She opens her mouth, then closes it. ‘Wait, are you sick _now_?’ Do you want a – a bin, or –‘

‘No. I.’ Lennie takes a breath, a really deep breath. ‘No. I’m fine.’ She looks at Marcia, and for the first time, it feels as if she doesn’t like looking at Marcia as much as Marcia doesn’t like looking at anybody. ‘I’m fine.’

She doesn't mention it again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Calcification is a process by which shells are produced. My use of egg as an image is directly inspired by A.S. Byatt's 'Possession'. Other things I had on my mind were Emily Dickinson (the vauge idea of, rather than any particular poems) and some songs: Mitski's 'Liquid Smooth' and 'I Will', Jay Som's 'I Think You're Alright', and Fiona Apple's 'Every Single Night'. 
> 
> I tried to make it as accurate as possible: the mirror (supposedly) is on the second floor of the Porcellian; Phoenix (supposedly) organizes banquets as a part of its punching process; the Hasty Pudding and the Bee are actual student organizations at Harvard; Henrietta's is an actual bistro, although pancakes are confirmed to be a part of its menu in April, rather than in February. 
> 
> Comments are always deeply appreciated.


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